A Project for a Competitive Istanbul on ICT

Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV) organized a press conference in Konya on the 23rd September, 2011 for the kick-off of the Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group Project. The chair of the board of TBV, Faruk Eczacibasi and the members of the project introduced the project to the press.

Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV) gave the start to the activities of Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group Project which is funded by Istanbul Development Agency. TBV is carrying out the project activities with Sabancı University (partner of the project) and Turkey Informatics Industry Association (TUBISAD – the associate partner of the project). With this project, TBV is in the preparation of taking ‘first planned step’ to make Istanbulmore a competitive and more innovative city in the world. In order to announce the project objectives, its activities and expected results to the public, a press meeting was organized after the board meeting of TBV on 23^rdSeptember, 2011 in Konya.

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The main objective of this project is to provide the democratization of the R&D and Innovation Policy establishment progresses which will increase the competitiveness in ICT sector, to support the appropriation of the EU Acquis and in this way to contribute to the socio-economic development in Istanbul, in cooperation with NGOs, Universities and public authorizations in Istanbul. In this respect, TBV will establish an Information Society Watchdog Group to analyse the ICT sector in Istanbul, to define the added value of ICT for Istanbul and how this value can be increased. This group, which will include the key persons from the NGOs, private sector and universities and collaborate with the public institutions, will be a role-model in Istanbul.

At the end of the project, Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group will prepare a detailed report named ‘A Competitive and Innovative City: Development with ICT in Istanbul’ and will present the report in a conference on June, 2012.

In this report;

The potential of Istanbul in ICT sector will be evaluated in line with the EU Acquis on ‘Information Society and Media’ and ‘Science and Research’ and acceleration of the studies on this area will be provided
At least three laws and legislations will be proposed to make Istanbul more developed in ICT sector on R&D and innovation process.
A strategy will be proposed to raise the awareness in Istanbul on R&D and innovation processes of ICT
‘The firsts’ of Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group Project are:
Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group will be the first ‘watchdog group’ in the ICT sector
The first monitoring database will be created in ICT sector in Turkey and it will be a sustainable monitoring system
This monitoring and evaluating system in ICT sector will give a lead to other sectors in Turkey
In terms of this democratic monitoring and evaluating system which will have an innovative structure, everybody will be able to share their opinions about the current system with policy makers and propose concrete suggestions to them.

In the press meeting, Faruk Eczacibasi, the chair of the board of TBV, stated that the value of the cities were measured by their creative culture and the important thing was the quality and the quantity of this creative culture. The cities which transform its creative culture to an industry, provide higher incomes from the tourism, service, information technologies and banking sectors. In order to make Istanbul such a city, the first step will be to define the quality and quantity of the added value of ICT sector in Istanbul so that we can find our deficiencies. Nobody in Istanbul works on ‘future internet’ therefore we will establish the Istanbul Information Society Group. He added that ‘This project is an initial project; firstly we will contribute to the development of Istanbul in this area and then this will be a model for Turkey.’

Leyla Arsan, the coordinator of the project and the CEO of TAGES which is a supporter of the project, indicated that in terms of ICT, they aim to make Istanbul a desirable city which is more competitive, innovative and attract the foreign capital investments easily, support the attempts to be a financial center, make culture tourism and international co-operations more attractive and Istanbul Information Society Watchdog Group Project will lead to this aim.